1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system, a control method therefor, a storage medium storing a control program therefor, and an image forming apparatus, and particularly relates to the printing system for printing a document via a network, the control method therefor, the storage medium storing the control program, and the image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, information leakage matters where information that should be managed by companies as secrecy leaks outside, such as leakage of personal information, have occurred frequently. Therefore, a security system for preventing or inhibiting leakage of confidential information is required.
Although an improvement of a security technique prevents leakage of electronic information managed by a computer, a paper document (a printed matter) obtained by printing the electronic information may still leak outside. As a method of inhibiting leakage of confidential documents by managing recovery conditions of the outputted confidential documents, Japanese laid-open patent publication (Kokai) No. 2008-123179 (JP2008-123179A) discloses an authentication printing system, for example. The authentication printing system operates so as not to allow a departure of a user who outputted the documents when the confidential documents are not recovered.
However, since the system of the above mentioned prior art determines that the confidential documents have been recovered when the user re-authenticates, the re-authenticated documents are determined to be recovered even if the documents are not recovered in fact, which gives difficulty of recovering the confidential documents appropriately.
Further, since the system of the above mentioned prior art determines that the confidential documents have been recovered when a recovery confirmation code that has been inputted at the time of departure is correct, the confidential documents that are not recovered in fact are determined to be recovered, which gives difficulty of preventing a recovery failure of the confidential documents.
Still further, since the system of the above mentioned prior art requires recovery checks for general documents that are not necessary to be treated as the confidential documents, the user is forced to do complicated operations. Further, in a company where many documents are printed, there is a problem that the printing operation delays owing to the recovery check operation.